Jay Witasick must have thought he was called in to this game to perform an encore performance of his work during Game 6 of the 2001 World Series. I’m just glad he was pitching against the Yankees this time – instead of pitching for them.

This was only the 6th time since 1957 that the Yankees have scored 17+ runs and had 20+ hits in a game at Yankee Stadium. Joe Torre has been there for five of the six. This is the 16th time that the Yankees have score 17+ runs in a game, period, for Joe Torre. Yes, they’ve won all sixteen times.

So, with this win, this is where the Yankees stand:

New York is 7 game back in the loss column of Boston
New York has 66 games left
Boston has 65 games left

So, if the Red Sox go 33-32 in their remaining games, the Yankees would need to go 42-24 in order to pass them. Let’s put in another way: Unless Boston goes into a full-blown, absolute, tank job, the Yankees can only afford to lose two dozen more games this season – over the next ten weeks.

In a nutshell, from any given Sunday through Saturday, the Yankees can only lose two games per week, until the end of the season, if they want to catch the Red Sox this year.

This is why it’s key for the Yankees to get an improvement in the rotation for Igawa, to get Mussina going right again, and for Andy Pettitte to be like he was earlier in the year.

Tomorrow is Sunday. It’s a new week. It’s also Andy Pettitte’s turn in the rotation. Andy was good his last time out – which followed three starts in a row where he was bad. Let’s hope his last time out was the start of a nice run for him. The Yankees can use it.

Either that, or, they better start scoring 17+ runs a game for Torre much more often.